Share this Page

Guardiola explains outburst at Southampton winger

Pep Guardiola thinks that Southampton “didn’t want to play” against Manchester City in their 2-1 loss and has explained his apparent spat with Nathan Redmond.

A Virgil van Dijk own goal opened the scoring for City before Oriel Romeu equalised near the end of the second half – but there was still time for Raheem Sterling to snatch a dramatic late winner in the final minute of added time.

Guardiola and Redmond seemed to come to blows at the end of the match but the Spaniard says that he was simply telling the winger how good he is.

“It was an astonishing end to the game,” Guardiola told the BBC. “It means a lot. They had 10 guys in the box, it was so complicated to attack them.

“They had chances in the first half, all the teams are better than us at set-pieces. They are stronger than us but we kept patient.

“At the end our momentum kept going, Raheem scores a fantastic goal.

“What impresses the most is the heart with which they play. What happened in the locker room was amazing. You have to enjoy these situations, you never know what will happen in the future. We want to win the league but you have to celebrate when you score in the last breath like that.

“I was telling Nathan Redmond how good he is at the end. Southampton have some super talented players, Redmond is so good one against one. But they didn’t want to play, they were time wasting from the ninth minute. I just wanted them to play.”